Good leaders are tribal leaders

The power of tribal leadership

27 février 2012

In their Tribal Leadership, Logan, King and Fischer-Wright defend the idea that companies’ success breaks down to groups of twenty to 150 people within the company that all know each other. They call them tribes and further explore the tribal culture and its leadership. Their findings vividly recall our own in our research on cultures in the traditional as opposed to freedom-based companies.

We loved the authors’ definition of five tribal stages and their thoughts on how to evolve organizations’ tribal cultures from lower to higher stages.

Those five tribal stages are:
1. Life stinks—The tribes are hostile to the company and actively disengaged.
2. My life stinks—The tribes passively resist to management initiatives and are passively disengaged (25% of cases).
3. I’m great—Most people retain information in order to outperform their counterparts, to be the best (49%).
4. We’re great—People want to be the best… together!
5. XX—Substantial innovators within tribes try to use their potential to have a larger impact (2%).